This invention relates generally to social networking, and in particular to evaluating assertions made in a social networking system.
In recent years, social networking systems have enabled users to share information about themselves, their friends, and their interests and preferences in real-world concepts with other users and entities, such as their favorite movies, musicians, celebrities, soft drinks, hobbies, sports teams, and activities. Users may include biographical information about themselves, such as where they grew up, what colleges and universities they attended, where they have worked, and so forth. A social graph of nodes interconnected by edges may be created through these interactions between users, entities, and other nodes on social networking systems. The edges representing interactions between the nodes have been assumed to be based on absolute truth and have been generated from the perspective of the user. In this way, a user may express interests and share information with other users and entities in social networking systems.
While social networking systems have provided tools for users to share information about themselves, this information has been accepted as an absolute truth, even where some uncertainty may exist in the statements. For example, a user may state that he or she is from Dallas, Tex., when in fact the user is from a nearby suburb of Dallas, Tex. As a result, the social networking system provides inaccurate information about the hometown of the user to other users of the social networking system. This may lead to ineffective targeted advertising directed towards the user based on inaccurate information. Further, the user experience is diminished because of the inaccurate information being provided.
Specifically, social networking systems have not provided tools or mechanisms for handling the uncertainty of statements made in building the social graph of interactions between users, entities, and interests. Accurate information about users, their connections with other users, and entities on social networking systems, as well as their interests and preferences provides a better user experience while enabling third-party developers to more accurately target users and better build applications that seek to drive traffic and increase engagement with their websites. Advertisers also benefit from accurate information in marketing interest-based goods and services to users of the social networking system. However, existing systems have not provided efficient mechanisms of identifying and evaluating assertions made by users in building a social graph.